-Michael J Dangler

So last night I had two dreams. I think that I have to revise my general statement about how often I have dreams. It used to be "never" back in high school. It became "rarely" when I started college, literally one per quarter or so.

Toward the end of my college career, coinciding with the more thought and depth (or so I like to think) I gave to my spiritual practice, it became slightly more common. . . maybe once per month.

But now, I have to say that I often dream, and those dreams are very vivid. The way my mind appears to work is that reality and fiction aren't so much different, but that I don't care to distinguish between the two in general. A lot of it comes from my work with visualization: I have no issue perceiving things that are not real at the same time as perceiving things that are.

Perhaps calling them "real" and "not real" doesn't really do them justice. . . Probably better is "real to us" and "more real to me than to you". As you can see from that pair of statements, the work with Chaos Magic and Discordianism has affected my worldview some, and that's probably the main catalyst that brings in so many interesting ideas.

Anyway, the dreams last night were quite interesting to me. The first was another in this maddening series of dreams of Elder Gods. The second I won't spend much time on because it's not really for you guys to read. :)

The first dream was affected, I think, by my reading of the most recent Necronomicon on the market. I think I've decided that (aside from some issues with continuity with the general Yog-Sothothery of HPL and some real liberties), this edition is quite nice. The only thing I could really, truly complain about is that there just aren't enough pictures!

Anyway, there are some pretty nifty things in it, and I kind of like the writing. But I was reading about various Old Ones last night, and that's when the trouble began.

See, in my dreams, I was walking across the dunes in a vast desert. It was night, and the sky was clear. I was walking, barefoot, across the sands when I topped a dune and saw on the next dune a large figure.

The figure was standing, hiss back to me and head cocked to the left, as if listening. I stood for a minute, watching the figure.

He was completely motionless. The garments he wore were mainly tight around his body, but there were edges that fluttered in the dry winds. On his fingers were rings encrusted with opulant jewels, and he wore a ragged hood over his head, which I presumed was open on the other side so he could see where he walked.

His stillness frightened me some, but yet I approached.

I ascended the dune he stood upon, meaning to call out as I came closer, but the winds seemed to carry the sound back down the dune. I came behind him and stood a moment, unsure what to do.

It was then that the figure turned.

Within his hood, there was nothing. No light from the stars illuminated a face. No eyes flashed in the moonlight. There was no blackness. Where a face should be, there was nothing.

And my heart stopped.

Nyarlathotep, for that is who this was, leaned toward me, his height shutting out the stars above in sudden darkness. I did not move. . . even had I wanted to, I could not have.

The Black Man stood for some time, and I was to paralyzed to even tremble at his . . . his gazeless gaze. There were no eyes to look upon me, but I knew he stared down upon me from within his hood.

And then there was nothing.

The Servant of Azathoth was gone, and my heart beat again. I the desert was gone, and so was the fierce wind.

The next dream was much simpler. Tina came home on Saturday, and we spent yesterday absoulutely exhausting ourselves while sledding and running errands. But the dream I had following Nyarlathotep's vision was quite nice, and let me leave it at this: it involved a bit of reciprocation.

I only wonder now whether it was as nice a dream as I'd like it to be, or whether it was Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat who has already been in my dreams once.

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